The Parents of Spring Break

We were hanging out at Maria's, because she has a bar by her pool. Installed by the previous owners, so that when she and Todd moved in- before Ari and Phillipe became the blessed focal point of the household- there was already shelving and reinforced-canvas bar stools and Tiki embellishment waiting to resume it's previous existence as a social hub. They only used it during Spring Break.

All the children were gone- they were gone away, they were gone on vacation to various all-inclusive resorts in Cancun, Mexico. The neighborhood association had done its' math a few years back and realised that if all of the parents pooled their airfare money, they could hire a charter flight to bring their precious cargo to the babysat vacation clubs on the peninsula; this way, the offspring could practice some beginners hedonism within the assured confines and the parents could save some bucks. It had become the Grand Tradition that someone hold the week-long adults' sleepover in their house. The hosting parents were given the funds raised during regular Neighborhood Association shake-downs that happened at hotel conference rooms and Monday-night restaurants during the rest of the year. The hosting couple had full discretionary power to spend it outfitting their homes with the necessities of the week.

That power- the spending power, and more importantly the power to design themes for the Spring Break Sleepover- had been used poorly before: there had been strippers, of course (someone was going to be offended, no matter what sex the stripper was and no matter what costume they wore,) and there had been well-intentioned community "projects" involving the hire of a cement mixer to re-pave the path across one of the 48" wide strip of grass that separated the two halves of Willow Boulevard, and there had been mounds of PCP that was heavily cut with baby laxatives. There had been hyper, mildly hallucinating adults shitting in each other's yards for a week straight. At the next forum, it was agreed by all but one household that the association money would not be available to purchase street drugs. The couple that had voted Nay contended that they'd never had such a good layer of manure on their rose beds before; it had turned out to be a banner year for their yellow-and-pink All Americans. Still: only legal drugs would be allowed at any future Spring Break at-home parties.

"I'm not sure I know exactly where they are. I mean where on a map." Maria was saying. It was 3rd-Day brunch, so everyone's hangover was well established but not yet rooted in their stem cells, like on the 7th-Day Bar-B-Q Finale. Maria's face was tense. Todd reached over me and across the table, grazing my chest on the way like he always did, and put his hand over hers.

"We have a call later. We checked online this morning, remember? They are having a ball."

"I still couldn't find it on a map. That's what I mean- it makes me- it gives me this sense of unease," Maria finished. We all nodded. We were worried, and it was about the time in the festival when everyone started talking about the kids. There was a custom that we all followed instinctively, like lemmings, and it was to not talk about the kids at all until 3rd Day. The 1st-Day Kickoff Skinny Dip and Barn Dance was about nothing except letting the chaos of the mind that is subsumed during the rest of the year- for the sake of wholesomeness and just running a household- burst out in sketchy behaviors and at least one small, almost ceremonial accidental fire. 2nd-Day was somewhat mired in the neighborhood's first traditional steps toward pacing itself- it was the day when most of the workshops and professional lectures were scheduled. Most attended these things because they'd paid for them in association fees, and felt that they were going to get their god damned money's worth, though it was anyone's guess how many attendees were awake beneath their gigantic Jackie O sunglasses, worn by women and men for their voluminous and uncommunicative lenses.

"I told them they couldn't have any scuba time this year because of finances, but it was mostly me freaking out. I just could never get that story about those tweens who were trapped in that man-made coral configuration for five hours." This was Josie talking, and she was definitely a fusser. She was on the other side of the long table, too, and Todd took it upon himself to let go of his wife's hand so that he could reach over to her. He managed to boobgraze me again while he repositioned his arm to be heading in Josie's direction.

"That was smart. Limits. Kids respect them and all that." He twinkled sardonically. Josie smiled for the first time since the Dip-and-Dance, as it had come to be called. "Ari wanted to get a two-day club pass, have you heard about these things? You can buy this pass that lets them get into any club- and I mean any club- on the hotel strip, entrance fee pre-paid, and it comes with a traveling janitor."

I startled as if I'd been touched by a third, mystery arm Todd had been hiding. "Janitor?"

Maria leaned over and took my hand, possibly swiping the side of the breast attached to the woman sitting next to her. "They travel with the kid- yeah, it checks out- they come along to clean up. They clean up puke on any surface. You can get them cleaned up personally, like with a fresh T-shirt and that, but that's a la carte."

"The gouging, my God!" I half-squealed, and we all winced at the sound. "Sorry, too loud" I whispered loudly.

Josie was nodding. "I'm not surprised, I'm not surprised at all. Can you just see a bunch of teenagers in some ridiculous club, all the black-light on, the neon going, and next to every other kid is a janitor." We laughed. She continued, "I can picture they are all in coveralls- blue coveralls- except instead of Eddie on the name tags, it says Juan- right?" We laughed again, hard, and then abruptly stopped because of the racism.

Then, to make up for Josie's not-funny imaginings, we all started talking about how magnificent each other's children had turned out. We complimented each other on their child's bravery on the archery range that fall when that freshman had gotten scored by an errant arrow; another parent on how much compassion their kid had shown over the entire marking period when she offered to give calculus lessons to the less-gifted (that girl was too smart,) and how all the catcher-uppers she'd taken on had jumped one and a half grades that quarter; how another one's mind was so open and unassuming, basically just open to experience in a way every other child had not managed to retain past their pre-school years (this was lovingly intoned to Barbara and Angela, as predictably as taxation, whose sperm donor had been less than his dossier had described and whose child was merely average.) Then we made another pitcher of Greyhounds and took ginger bites of the catered stuffed french toast.

Spring Break Week tripped on, flashing by, and every day we would enthuse about our flock of underlings more and more. Stories became Bunyan-esque, so that the children were triathletes and had been scouted by Princeton, which did not normally scout for students but had just heard about little Turmoix/Evenellena...And we glowed, we did- we remembered, through the haze of recently-decriminalized pot smoke and perfumed Mohitos, how much we loved them. We remembered our pasts with those little imps with near-accuracy, and though we knew those re-tellings were full of air we kept our mouths shut about it. The inventions were too much fun, were a slumber party game that took all week to finish. We missed them, in the abstract.

On 6th-Day, there was a banquet. Everyone had become unusually still (despite the perfect champagne fountain that beckoned from Maria and Todd's front yard,) waiting for the host's toast. Todd stood, messily dressed in a 70's-era ruffle shirt tuxedo, and almost told everyone what we didn't want to know:

"Ok, all right, ok. Thanks for coming, you all. Maria and I had the best time ever of any of you. I don't say that to rub anyone's face in it, but as a compliment, because it was the most fun hosting our little crowd, wasn't it hon?" Maria nodded too enthusiastically to cover for Todd's lack of clarity. "Anyway." Todd looked around at all the puffy grown-up faces around him, and then sat down. He held a piece of paper to his wife. People looked at each other with wary, bloodshot eyes.

"So the limos are going to be here soon. They're sooner than expected, you guys." There was murmuring from us all- this had happened once, maybe twice before, and it was unwelcome news. "There's really more, guys." Maria swallowed. We all watched her throat work- her green lame minidress highlighted her neck so well it was hard not to. "I'd better just jump in. The limousine back from the airport is coming in almost exactly two hours."

There was silence, of course. No one wanted to give this thing any credit, so we played possum by not making a peep for thirty seconds. Finally someone said, "Are you kidding?"

Maria looked down at the paper her husband had been unable to bring himself to read, then back up again. "No, it's not a joke. The hotel had to evacuate late last night, and the kids got sent home early. They called and everything, but I guess no one was around." The association had thought itself clever when it had designated a singular land line as the contact phone number from the hotel or the charter company. That way there would be no repeated phone-calls that would take us from our 5th-Day Full Bacchanalia- the hired band, the beloved game of Orgy Charades that was anticipated with such pleasure during the year, the pup-tent vomitorium- to listen to details of sullen sun burnt highschoolers mistreating the local lizard population. Maria took a breath, exhaled it, took another one and said "two hours and zero minutes, people."

The place practically erupted in a fireball right then, fueled by the panic-sweat and pure adrenaline of a neighborhood's worth of very high responsible adults, flinging themselves out of their settees and laps that didn't belong to their spouses to run to the nearest service table or globe-sized water bong and make it go away. Fortunately, Maria and Todd had followed the prescribed emergency measures and kept their basement stocked with tarps, talcum powder, and three empty bathtubs; we managed to get everything put away or hidden, including the really shitfaced, who'd been thrown into a bed with their evening wear still on. There was no time to get changed, ourselves. The limousine arrived.

Fiona, the single mom from the very bottom of the cul-de-sac, suggested those not already in their underwear strip down, and that we would all get in the pool, except for Martin the widower, who was already in swimming trunks. He was stationed behind the Tiki bar, as if he'd been there making blender drinks all night.

Someone's child walked in, followed by everyone else's child. They were practically asleep on their feet, and the tans that we'd all paid for were indistinguishable under the group pallor. "Where is everybody?" the child said.

We all looked child-ward, as if we'd only just noticed them. Todd spoke first. "What was up with the hotel, sweetheart? You didn't get your last day!" This worked perfectly: all of the kids started up, saying the same thing about the unfairness of the situation and passing blame around like a tray full of crab-salad stuffed mushroom caps. We looked around at each other, wet and making plans to get out of the pool with unaccustomed poise, and there was an unspoken group spark: next year there would be a new fee, maybe- something to pay for the actors to play us, should this ever happen again, so that we could properly sober up while the children were telling their woeful tales and eating like caterpillars and someone else could be nodding their heads, listening.